“The good guys did not win—the terms are defined in such a way as to allow a significant amount of mischief in the Internet space,” Vint Cerf, the co-author of the TCP/IP protocol, and a founding father of the Internet itself, told Ars.

Of course, not everyone sees it that way.

“The ‘good guys’ (the US, and its allies including Canada and the UK) succeeded in keeping the [International Telecommunication Regulations] away from the Internet, and yet inexplicably chose to dump the whole thing at the end,” Milton Mueller, a professor at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies, told Ars. “This was a mistake, in my humble opinion, and will make us look isolated.”

Meanwhile, the head of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), Hamadoun Touré, had yet another opinion.

“This conference was not about Internet control or Internet governance,” he said in the closing sessions on Friday. “Let me repeat that: this conference was not about Internet control or Internet governance. And indeed there are no treaty provisions on the Internet.”

For some odd reason, the only official list of countries that did or didn't sign the agreement at the conference is this French-language chart. Assuming it's correct, the "Final Acts" at WCIT-12 has 89 signatories, including Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Mali, Senegal, Venezuela, Jamaica, Jordan, Singapore, and many others. Who didn't sign? The US, the UK, Canada, the European Union, Peru, the Philippines, Malawi, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, India, and others.

It's all about control

On Friday, the WCIT-12 delegations approved a 30-page document (PDF) entitled “Final Acts,” nearly all of which encompasses the “International Telecommunication Regulations”—in short, making sure that the existing international telecom infrastructure continues to work properly.

But the word “Internet” does not even appear until page 24, under the non-binding appendices, under the title “To foster an enabling environment for the greater growth of the Internet”.

And there, under section 1, is this lovely little sentence:

“[WCIT-12 resolves to invite member states] to elaborate on their respective positions on international Internet-related technical, development and public-policy issues within the mandate of ITU at various ITU forums including, inter alia, the World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum, the Broadband Commission for Digital Development and ITU study groups.”

Because so many countries agreed to this document, experts fear that the Internet—whose governance has traditionally been de facto limited to technical and policy bodies like International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF)—could take its first baby step toward being controlled and/or regulated by the ITU. The reality is, of course, that there is no one body that has ultimate authority over the Internet. It is, by design, decentralized.

“What was happening at a really big picture level was that these countries are very interested in continuing to put serious controls on the way that their citizens can use the Internet,” Ellery Biddle, a policy analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told Ars. “They're bothered by the US Internet Freedom agenda and they're bothered by the fact that the bodies that do make policies are US-driven and US-centric bodies.”

By not signing, the refuseniks have drawn a line in the sand saying that the ITU should not even be a forum to talk about Internet-related issues.

“The fact that the resolution exists, what they're signalling is that the UN is a place where we can discuss rules,” Jerry Brito, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, told Ars. Brito is also the co-founder of WCITLeaks.org, a site that publishes leaked documents from the conference.

“It's a trojan horse,” he added. “[The signatories are saying] we can eventually adopt binding rules. To this point, if you wanted to discuss matters related to the Internet, [you were limited] to IGF or ICANN. It's about [...] who has a seat at the table. Countries like China [and] Russia have a difficult time steering IGF, whereas at ITU they have a much easier time.”

Russia, China, Iran, and many other authoritarian countries have repeatedly tried to push for international legitimacy for practices that they already engage in—increased national control, surveillance, better attribution and identification of users, filtering, and other real-world consequences for what is said and done online.

Brito pointed out that currently, the IETF, the engineering body that makes many technical decisions about the underlying architecture of the Internet, has a very open governing structure. So open, in fact, that anyone (yes, anyone) can just show up and join. They have ongoing e-mail lists and twice-yearly meetings. But their motto is “rough consensus and running code.”

“That's difficult for China or Russia to come in—they would get laughed out of the room,” Brito added, pointing out that at the ITU, it’s one country, one vote.

Reservations abound

On Thursday, WCITLeaks published a 41-page document (PDF), appropriately entitled “Declarations and Reservations.” (This document is longer than the “Final Acts” itself).

This list of 84 countries includes some countries that would normally be considered obvious American allies, including Germany, Finland, Kuwait, Senegal, and many others. It also includes the reservations of less-obvious delegates, including Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Russia.

But this document significantly differs from the official list on the ITU site, suggesting that there may have been some last-minute signing or voting changes.

In those documents, Sweden clearly distances itself from all of the Internet-relevant portions.

“Sweden notes that ‘Resolution PLEN/3 (Dubai, 2012) To foster an enabling environment for the greater growth of the Internet in the International Telecommunications Regulations’ does not address the full picture of the environment and situation of the Internet and Internet Governance,” the country wrote.

“Sweden therefore considers that this resolution does not do justice to all stakeholders involved in Internet related matters, and that it does not recognize the fully working, self-­developing, bottom-­up multi-stakeholder formats that work and evolve today on the Internet. Sweden also considers that the public Internet and other Internet Protocol-­based networks and services, whether governmental, public or private, are outside the scope of the International Telecommunication Regulations.”

On Friday, on an official website, the Swedish government (Google Translate) said it was refusing to sign.

"Sweden will not contribute to limiting the free and open Internet," Anna-Karin Hatt, Sweden's IT and Energy Minister, said in a statement.

Could the Internet split in two? (It already has.)

The ultimate fear, of course, is that the Internet will split—an outcome that remains remote. On the other hand, one could argue that given China's highly restricted Internet and Iran's attempt at a "halal Internet," it already has.

“[Through the] IETF, it would never happen—through the UN, it might,” Brito added.

“If China, Russia and some bloc of countries adopted some certain standards that they required their ISPs to meet. Why not? This could happen. It's not a certainty. I think they would be shooting themselves in the foot if they split the Internet. But is it possible? Yes, it's possible.”

On a Thursday conference call with reporters, Ambassador Terry Kramer, who led the American delegation at WCIT-12, acknowledged this extremely difficult, but not insurmountable, possibility.

“Now, if a country says, listen, I want to have a different standard, I’m going to have a different approach, then they can go proceed with that,” he said.

“Candidly, they could still do that under national sovereignty. But they’re going to have to deal, again, with a more and more interconnected environment. And so I think our job in all of this is to continue to espouse the benefits of an open Internet, of free content, of low costs here, of all the things that entrepreneurs do with the Internet. We have to keep advocating that, and that will create a natural bias or momentum in favor of it. And again, at the end of the day, if somebody wants to develop a different standard approach, it’s obviously that country’s prerogative. But we’re hoping that’s not an easy task.”

Promoted Comments

I don't think the splitting of the Internet is as unlikely as we might think. Indeed it is already happening to a certain extent with China and Iran as the article mentions. Right now the incentive of the content the rest of the Internet holds is the only real thing keeping them interconnected. If the content starts being eroded and replaced with local versions, that incentive can only diminish. I almost certainly expect the Internet as we know it to start fracturing into different pieces in the foreseeable future. What effect this has on the rest of us is uncertain. It will most probably be bad for developing countries, but for the majority of current users it would depend on how things get broken up. In the end, it just amounts to limits on the free flow of information over the Internet to varying degrees.

The internet protocol itself was designed to be decentralized, on its beginning it was designed so even when nuclear attacks destroyed huge parts of one place, the packets could be routed using a different path.

The Internet as we know it today is decentralized by design and this is why its working. The minute we stupid humans let other stupid and egoist humans take control of it and make it centralized, we have probably destroyed the biggest invention in the past century. Its is part of our live today and it lets us communicate each others minds with other persons where ever they are on planet earth.

The only reason why someone would want control of it, its evil reasons. Control is power, and they want to control information, otherwise you would not care, like must of us don´t care how energy works either. We just use it.

44 Reader Comments

I don't think the splitting of the Internet is as unlikely as we might think. Indeed it is already happening to a certain extent with China and Iran as the article mentions. Right now the incentive of the content the rest of the Internet holds is the only real thing keeping them interconnected. If the content starts being eroded and replaced with local versions, that incentive can only diminish. I almost certainly expect the Internet as we know it to start fracturing into different pieces in the foreseeable future. What effect this has on the rest of us is uncertain. It will most probably be bad for developing countries, but for the majority of current users it would depend on how things get broken up. In the end, it just amounts to limits on the free flow of information over the Internet to varying degrees.

How would this work with a globalized world? Would multinational companies not be able to communicate to their other sections? Would China be okay with saying to a company that it can't communicate with its subsidiaries in other countries? I'd find that hard to believe. It can work now because China is still in the developing stage but when it starts switching to a more service based society instead of a labour based one I don't see how they can continue with such a wardened off infrastructure.

The US, the UK, Canada, the European Union, Peru, the Philippines, Malawi, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, India, and others

FYI, the UK is in the European Union. it looks odd to name it also.

The EU is also a separate entity that, for example, occupies a seat at the G20 along with the UK, France, Germany & Italy. Of course, it's not a separate entity as part of the UN, so I don't know if it gets to be a separate signatory from the UK or they just felt the need to add for emphasis how f'ed up this "treaty" is.

This is why the UN is such a joke when it comes to doing anything other than diplomacy.

This is going go a little bit off topic, but ah well.

At least the UN exists. At least there is some attempt at getting nations to cooperate, or rather at least a place where they can en masse, even if considering it's size the UN seems to get very little done.

I suppose how you think of the UN is based on how you generally view the world and human nature as a whole though.

O, and as for the UK being separate; for some reason we're still a nation of 'considerable' importance, somehow. Maybe being part of the G8 or something.

Hamadoun Touré:“This conference was not about Internet control or Internet governance,” he said in the closing sessions on Friday. “Let me repeat that: this conference was not about Internet control or Internet governance. And indeed there are no treaty provisions on the Internet.”

Russia, China, Iran, and many other authoritarian countries have repeatedly tried to push for international legitimacy for practices that they already engage in—increased national control, surveillance, better attribution and identification of users, filtering, and other real-world consequences for what is said and done online.

Did you read that? The second part starting with with dash?

From the many articles that Ars has reported on (and most recently US Government seeks to shut down NSA wiretapping lawsuit) one would suspect that the US would be pro increased national control, surveillance, better attribution and identification of users, filtering, and other real-world consequences for what is said and done online.

I mean, who sold the technology to Muammar Gaddafi to spy on his own people? hint: the country belongs to one of those that didn't sign: The US, the UK, Canada, the European Union, ... And the technology just keeps getting better and cheaper to implement.

It can be argued that these countries didn't explicitly (some) sell surveillance tech. to authoritarian countries but the companies that did are certainly start sponsored (defence contractors, etc).

This seems to be more of a dog and pony show. It's no secret that US (with its allies) engage in the same type of surveillance that the above countries do, except that they hide behind a slew of "state secret privilege" and pardon private companies that help them in accomplishing such tasks.

So what's the difference?You go to the international community and defiantly defend against regulating the internet through the ITU using authoritarian governments as an examples of what would happen if that came to be even though you support and engage in such actions yourselfOr Being an authoritarian (honest) government that seeks such regulation to accomplish what authoritarian governments need to do to maintain the status quo (being helped by other state sponsored companies)?

This is really confusing:The Internet as we know it today is decentralized by design and this is why its working. The minute we stupid humans let other stupid and egoist humans take control of it and make it centralized, we have probably destroyed the biggest invention in the past century. Its is part of our live today and it lets us communicate each others minds with other persons where ever they are on planet earth.

The only reason why someone would want control of it, its evil reasons. Control is power, and they want to control information, otherwise you would not care, like must of us don´t care how energy works either. We just use it.

There is this mirage on the horizon: centralization vs. decentralization.

The ISP act as centralized units for our internet connections. Control them and well... just observe what MPAA and RIAA are trying to do. Not just them but other telecommunication companies (att, verizon, etc). Centralization is already in place. And its not 'hidden' news that many private companies work to help this centralization.

The internet appears decentralized but when a country like syria can 'shut-off' the internet much the same way that any country can (Obama internet kill switch), the idea and role of decentralization comes into question. What does decentralization mean to you? Control? Power? Ethics?

Decentralization, to me, is not so much technological (the technology exists to make so) but more so political. So in that sense, WE the people decide IN OPEN SPACE/OPEN FORMAT/OPEN DEBATE (as opposed to closed doors, secret handshakes, and state privileges) how to regulate the internets. The advent of the internet has brought forth the ability for every person to represent their own interests rather than relying on some career (bought and sold) politician.

Of course, riding on the cusp of the wave, there is much work to be done but being honesty should be a priority.

... push for international legitimacy for practices that they already engage in... no doubt the 'free' market has already legitimized these practices.